SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)

Director: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
Starring: Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples, The Fifth Dimension, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Luis Miranda

The legendary concert festival Woodstock is still talked about and remembered to this day. The Harlem Cultural Festival should also be talked about in that same fashion yet has been largely ignored until now. It’s the subject of the new documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) which is now in theaters and streaming on Hulu. Both and the Harlem Cultural Festival drew massive crowds in the summer of 1969. The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed but the footage has stayed covered in boxes and ignored since then. Now Questlove, the band leader for The Roots and The Tonight Show, takes us back to that powerful summer as the film’s director. There was a change of culture and history taking place in the Black Community. Some wanted peace while others went off to fight in the Vietnam War. There was rooting and rage in Harlem, and festival host and producer Tony Lawrence wanted to bring the community together through the power of music.

Here’s my review